Focus Session Abstracts

Interfacial interactions are ubiquitous in various industries including Energy, Water, Transportation, Buildings, Microelectronics, and Medicine. Recent advances in manipulating interfacial topography at multiple length scales has led to various novel approaches to dynamically control phase transitions, dynamic wetting, adhesion, transport phenomena, and biological processes. Examples include, hetero-interfaces that control nucleation-level phenomena, droplet impact on textures, slip, condensation and boiling, ice-phobic surfaces, dynamic wetting of complex fluids, stimuli-responsive nanointerfaces, plastron surfaces, electrowetting, separation, etc. The objective of this focus session is to bring together scientists and engineers working on various aspects of interfacial engineering in thermal-fluids to define the vision of this newly emerging field. The talks in this symposium will be organized to articulate the scope of this field. Speakers will discuss latest advances, new phenomena, novel experimental methods, modeling, and emerging applications. The focus session will help establish a forum for this rapidly growing cross-disciplinary field at APS DFD.

The past few years has witnessed a revival of interest in vortex dynamics owing to the role played by vortices in the study of fluid-structure interactions. Traditionally, vortex motion in fluid-structure interactions has focussed on applications in aerodynamics and wing theory. Many novel applications have arisen, however, in other research areas such as biological fluid dynamics where the flight mechanisms of insects, the propulsion of jellyfish and the schooling protocols of fish have been of interest. Other recent work includes the role of vortex motion in Maxwell's "falling card" problem, the flapping of flags and other problems where deformable bodies interact with a surrounding fluid and vortices are shed. This focus session will provide a forum for investigators in these (and other related) areas to share their recent results.